Belgian art-rockers Thot return with a music video for epic industrial ballad »Hüzün«, a psychedelic trip into Bulgarian folklore!
Brussel, Belgium based avant-garde/industrial/post-rock band Thot premiere new single and music video »Hüzün« taken from their upcoming full-length album, »Delta«, set to release on May 10th, 2024 via Pelagic Records.
Tracklist:
01. Euphrate
02. Céphéide
03. Sleep Oddity (feat. Lenka Dusilová)
04. Bateleur
05. The Last Solstice
06. Hüzün
07. Blind Streets
08. Supercluster
09. Morning Waltz
10. Estuaire
Courtesy of Pelagic Records:
“Belgium-based art-rockers Thot return with epic industrial ballad, »Hüzün«! Accompanying full-length video is a psychedelic trip into Bulgarian folklore.”
Belgium’s trailblazing industrial post-rock collective THOT have released the nine-minute epic, »Hüzün«, from their forthcoming fourth full-length »Delta«, out 10th May through Berlin’s Pelagic Records.
A band existing in constant flux, THOT thrive in the tumultuous melting pot of modern life and »Delta«, their first long form release since 2017’s breathtaking »Fleuve«, is an even more ambitious musical melting pot of the people, places, spaces and times that have helped define the band to date.
Like so many projects begun in and around 2019, »Delta« was derailed by the pandemic, with the first iteration of the album scrapped entirely due to creative differences amplified by enforced social distancing. Band leader and principal songwriter Grégoire Fray, born in France but based in Belgium, found himself back at the beginning; now questioning his identity as an artist in the wake of global catastrophe.
Channelling his despondency through THOT’s playful twist on chronological time, this crisis of faith became the catalyst for »Delta«’s new shape.
Photo by Michael Thiel x Noémie Ena
Written, arranged, recorded and documented between late 2019 and 2023 by Fray alongside THOT collaborators Lukas Melville, Gil Chevingné, Stéphane Fedele, Anaïs Elba, Michael Thiel and Juliette Mauduit; »Delta« is as much a product of the band’s past as it is their present.
Fittingly, the simmering, downtempo »Hüzün«, featuring Juliette Mauduit’s arresting voice and lyrics, is inspired by Grégoire’s memory of a past performance in Istanbul. The title, a Turkish word for the liminal space between sorrow and melancholy, was used by an audience member to describe the experience and, many years later, became the means of returning to deeply personal memories in the form of Mauduit’s words as well as formative tool for Fray to address all of the cultural, musical and emotional liminalities that »Delta« explores.
Boundary-breaking by nature, THOT have also released an epic, full-length video to accompany »Hüzün« that features a psychedelic encounter with the Kukeri, traditionally costumed Bulgarian men who perform ancient rituals intended to ward off evil spirits. Filmed in Bulgaria over the Summer of 2021, when THOT were recording with the women of ‘Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares’, an iconic Bulgarian traditional polyphonic choir previously sampled by THOT who feature in full on »Delta«, the video is yet another international meeting of minds and cultures that ties into the band’s sprawling trajectory as one of a series of narratively interlinked features that celebrate so many of the faces and places that helped bring »Delta« into being, as well as characters and tales that have emerged from the creative process itself.
Deeply intimate whilst simultaneously internationally inclusive, »Hüzün« is an important piece of »Delta«’s story, a story that THOT want us to piece together ourselves, as a story of our own; a powerful, post-rock document of hope and perseverance against all odds, a narrative that has already been shaped by so many people around the world.
»Delta« is released on the 10th of May.
»Hüzün« is out now.
Grégoire Fray on »Hüzün«: “This music video is particularly special for me. A few weeks before going to Bulgaria in order to record music with The Mystery of The Bulgarian Voices in the Summer of 2021, I realised that we could also shoot a music video, as Bulgaria is a land full of surprises. »Hüzün« was the perfect track for this scenery, especially with the choir in the middle section. I wrote a script for our singer Juliette then spent hours on google maps to choose the perfect filming spots. The next day after recording with the choir, we took to the road for two days across the country, filming like crazy, waking up at 5am to catch the rising sun on the Black Sea or getting lost in the mountain to meet with the Kukeri, with help of National Geographic photographer Ivo Danchev. This filming experience was as epic as the protagonist’s journey and was definitely a transformative experience for me too.”
Pre-order / stream / download HERE
Bojan Bidovc // music enthusiast, promoter, misanthrop and sometimes a journalist as well